This year, metadata development is one of our key priorities and weâre making a start with the release of version 5.4.0 of our input schema with some long-awaited changes. This is the first in what will be a series of metadata schema updates.
What is in this update?
Publication typing for citations
This is fairly simple; weâve added a âtypeâ attribute to the citations members supply. This means you can identify a journal article citation as a journal article, but more importantly, you can identify a dataset, software, blog post, or other citation that may not have an identifier assigned to it. This makes it easier for the many thousands of metadata users to connect these citations to identifiers. We know many publishers, particularly journal publishers, do collect this information already and will consider making this change to deposit citation types with their records.
Every year we release metadata for the full corpus of records registered with us, which can be downloaded for free in a single compressed file. This is one way in which we fulfil our mission to make metadata freely and widely available. By including the metadata of over 165 million research outputs from over 20,000 members worldwide and making them available in a standard format, we streamline access to metadata about scholarly objects such as journal articles, books, conference papers, preprints, research grants, standards, datasets, reports, blogs, and more.
Today, weâre delighted to let you know that Crossref members can now use ROR IDs to identify funders in any place where you currently use Funder IDs in your metadata. Funder IDs remain available, but this change allows publishers, service providers, and funders to streamline workflows and introduce efficiencies by using a single open identifier for both researcher affiliations and funding organizations.
As you probably know, the Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a global, community-led, carefully curated registry of open persistent identifiers for research organisations, including funding organisations. Itâs a joint initiative led by the California Digital Library, Datacite and Crossref launched in 2019 that fulfills the long-standing need for an open organisation identifier.
We began our Global Equitable Membership (GEM) Program to provide greater membership equitability and accessibility to organizations in the worldâs least economically advantaged countries. Eligibility for the program is based on a memberâs country; our list of countries is predominantly based on the International Development Association (IDA). Eligible members pay no membership or content registration fees. The list undergoes periodic reviews, as countries may be added or removed over time as economic situations change.
Good governance is important and something that Crossref thinks about regularly so the board frequently discusses the topic, and this year even more so. At the November 2017 meeting there was a motion passed to create an ad-hoc Governance Committee to develop a set of governance-related questions/recommendations. The Committee has met regularly this year and the following questions are under deliberation regarding term limits, role of the Nominating Committee, implications of contested elections, and more.
The full motion to create the committee is:
The ad hoc Governance Committee should discuss and make specific recommendations (including where necessary proposing appropriate by-law amendments) about (i) the timing of the annual election of members and whether the newly elected Board can take office a fixed period after the election results are finalized; (ii) the role and responsibilities of the Nominating Committee and its relationship to the Board; (iii) the implications of having contested Board elections; (iv) the election of officers, Executive Committee members, and committee chairs, and v) options and required changes for board members to represent specific constituencies (e.g. based on membership types).
The Governance Committee members are:
Paul Peters (Hindawi and Board Chair)
Scott Delman (ACM and Board Treasurer)
Chris Shillum (Elsevier and Executive Committee member)
Mark Patterson (eLife)
Ed Pentz (Crossref Executive Director)
Lisa Hart (Crossref Finance & Operations Director)
Emily Cooke (Pierce Atwood, legal counsel).
The committeeâs goal was to try to maintain and increase transparency; consider practicality and impact of any changes and ensure continuity and balance.
At the March meeting the committee provided an overview of the issues they had discussed. There was consensus to accept the committeeâs recommendation to address all of the governance matters comprehensively at the July 2018 meeting.
Discussions resulted in two changes to our by-laws:
1. Membership eligibility
To provide clarity around membership qualification, we resolved to amend Article I Section 1 by replacing the text in its entirety with the following text:
Membership in Crossref shall be open to any organization that publishes professional and scholarly materials and content and otherwise meets the terms and conditions of membership established from time to time by the Board of Directors, and to such other entities as the Board of Directors shall determine from time to time.
2. Start date of board terms
We also resolved to amend Article V Section 4 to replace the phrase âon the day afterâ with the phrase âduring the next calendar quarter immediately followingâ. This allows the Board to meet directly ahead of Crossrefâs Annual Meeting and Board election (from 2019) instead of directly after.
The first change captures the fact that we have a very broad community beyond what is seen as traditional publishers, who themselves do not solely identify as publishers anymore. It reflects how our membership has evolved, and also includes organizations that publish that arenât publishers (universities, government agencies, etc.)
The second change was a practical one. As Crossref had its first contested election in 2017, and in 2018 as well, it seemed unreasonable to have a brand new Board meet the day after the election, especially when there is potential for officers to not be re-elected. The old by-laws were very specific about holding the Board meeting the day after the election. With this change, starting with the March meeting, the new Board will have a full calendar year of meetings, which seems more practical, and we will establish a process for the election of officers.
During that meeting we deliberated the following questions/recommendations raised by the committee:
Development of a policy on canvassing/campaigning by candidates in Board elections;
Development of policies on nominations to the positions of Chair, Treasurer, Executive Committee members, the Nominating Committee Chair, and the Audit Committee Chair;
Analysis of how best to achieve balance and representation on the Board going forward (designated seats and/or a binding Board remit to the Nominating Committee);
Analysis as to whether to impose term limits on board members;
Analysis as to how best to handle independent nominations to the Board (eliminate the option, or improve the process); and
Review of our governing documentsâ provisions on vacancies, to confirm that the Board follows the required steps on the filling of vacancies.
At the November 2018 Board meetingâfollowing Crossref LIVE18âthere were two more amendments to the bylaws:
3. Removal of independant nominations
To remove Art. V II Sec. 3 on independent nominations. This change reflects the consensus that there is no need for independent nominations with the introduction of contested elections.
4. Membership start date of record
To amend Art. I Sec. 2 to amend language dealing with record date of membership. This is a practical change following the July 2018 introduction of new membership terms which are click-through online terms and donât need counter-signatures.
The new Board will resume the discussion on designated seats at our March 2019 meeting.
